Before anything else:

Please backup your savegame!

Even though we tried as much as possible to keep this update compatible with older saves, we can't guarantee that some edge cases might still destroy your savegame. So if you don't intend to start a new game, we recommend you backup your old saves first, so in case anything goes wrong we can help you to restore your progress! To see where your savefiles are stored, have a look here: Savegame locations Whew! After this shocker introduction, now let's continue more gently and say hello to all you lovely AIs out there! As we've mentioned in the last development update, we are unfortunately very busy with our private lifes and fulltime jobs, thus the update took us longer as we wanted and also we had to reduce the scope a bit, because we didn't want you to have to wait for another month or so for all the goodies in this. Mainly there are 10 levels missing for the last 5 planets and the new Equipment recipes (Tier 2 and onwards) - we will bring those with the next update that hopefully won't take as long as this one did, as we will fully focus on adding new content with the next update. (And fix bugs/rebalance things you may report). Also please note, that due to some changes of internal stats you may have to unlock some achievements for beating levels (respectively planets) again. Unfortunately we don't know how Steam behaves in this regard if you've already unlocked them, we tried our best to migrate your statistics data to keep your achievements. Okay those are enough downers, let's finally get to the good part! Here's what's new with this update:

Features

• Added 12 new Levels (10 more to come with the next update).
  • Rebalanced enemies, rewards and unlocks of all levels to have a smoother progress and less difficulty spikes. Note however, this may interfer with your existing savegames in that you may be able to collect more skillpoints than you can spend on all towers. (We plan to add more ways to gain and spend Skillpoints with a later update though).
  • Completely overhauled the Level Selection screen:
    
  • Existing savegames should have unlocked all Levels up to their highest one reached. But it is possible, that you may have to play all levels again. We are sorry if this inconvenience applies to you and hope it doesn't annoy you too much :[
  • "Cosuna" got a little overhaul and additional portals.
  • "Saitoris" now also uses the unity Terrain system and has some Paths drawn.
  • Some minor changes to existing levels (mostly cosmetic)
• Added 2 new enemies that you can encounter and each Portal Level of each Planet now has a Boss enemy. All these new enemies can appear in Portal mode aswell.
• Added new Resources, Recipes and overhauled their usages and stats in the recipe modification. (See the Item Section below for more on that)
• Tower Build Slots now have a new model
  
• Added a new visual toggle to show elemental details of damage done by towers:
  
• Overhauled the enemy info screen a bit to make the most important infos better visible:
  
• Added new Factory/Interstellar Upgrades in the Resource Nexus:
  • Legendary Drone Speed (+100%)
  • Legendary Drone Capacity (+5)
  • Legendary Belt Speed (+100%) now has 1 additional Level
  • Legendary Grabber Speed (+100%) now has 1 additional Level
  • Legendary Mining Speed (+100%) now has 1 additional Level
• We've changed some parts of the tutorial and also rearranged the tasks, so that setting up your base now comes a bit later. We hope that new players get less overwhelmed this way.
• Added new Quests and removed/changed some e.g. winning a level 3 times is now changed to win all levels of a planet.
• All these updates also apply to the Demo Version, which now can be played for the first 3 planets instead of the first 3 levels. (So the last demo level is the final Cosuna mission, where you also unlock recipe modifications)

Items

[expand type=details] All equipment values have undergone balancing changes that we didn't list here. In general all weapons and ammo should now have a wider and higher possible damage roll. Recipe changes The following recipes have been removed! They are still available on existing savegames for compability reasons but won't unlock when you start a new game. With the next update, we want to further give the player control on how ammunition behaves and thus will extend the ammo modification options instead of giving each tower 2 different ammo recipes.

• HE-Ammo Tier 1
• EMP-Projectile Tier 1
• Titanium Batteries Tier 1
• Freezer burn Liquids Tier 1
• EMP Shell Tier 1
• Ionization Transformator Tier 1

The following recipes are now unlocked by default instead of by beating a level:

• T1 Tower Optics and Hydraulics.
• Cable (Copper) & Uncommon Package (Copper Cable)
• Steel & Uncommon Package (Steel)
• Aluminium & Uncommon Package (Aluminium)
• Uncommon Package (Sulfur)
• Common Package (Sand)
• Convert Stone to Sand

Misc. Recipe and item changes

• Weapon recipes now inherit the base values of the weapon when modified. This means, if you modify a weapon it will have the default base stats + the values you add by modifying.
  • For example: Your weapon has (+2) | (+5) physical damage as base stat. If you now modify this weapon recipe and add components that add (+1) | (+2) physical damage, the resulting weapon will now have (+3) | (+7) instead of (+1) | (+2).
• Increased Starting Drones for a new Game from 12 to 15
• AP Ammo Tier 1 - Reduced Iron Ingot cost from 8 to 6
• Reduced crafting time of Cut Stone from 3s to 2s
• Reduced crafting time of Weapon Barrel T1 from 3s to 1s
• Reduced crafting time of Tesla Generator T1 from 5s to 3s
• Reduced crafting time of Artillery Barrel T1 from 5s to 3s
• Reduced crafting time of Conducting Rail T1 from 5s to 3s
• Reduced crafting time of Cryo Nozzle T1 from 5s to 3s
• Reduced crafting time of Cryo Pump T1 from 5s to 3s
• Reduced crafting time of Laser Pump T1 from 5s to 3s
• Reduced crafting time of Optical Cavity T1 from 5s to 3s
• Reduced crafting time of Plasma Chamber T1 from 5s to 3s
• Reduced crafting time of Plate Capacitor T1 from 5s to 3s
• Reduced crafting time of Tesla Coil Ring T1 from 5s to 3s
• Reduced crafting time of Tesla Generator T1 from 5s to 3s
• Reduced crafting time of Targeting System T1 from 5s to 3s
• Reduced crafting time of Tower Hydraulics T1 from 5s to 3s

[/expand]

Balancing

Towers

[expand type=details] Gun Tower

• Increased max Range from 30 to 35
• Decreased min RoF from 0.15 to 0.10
• Increased base Range from 16/20/24 to 20/22/24
• Increased base Damage from 9/15/23 to 11/18/28

Railgun Tower

• Increased max Range from 30 to 35
• Decreased base Reload Time from 8/7/6,5 to 7/6,5/6
• Increased base Electric Piercing from 0/0/0 to 4%/6%/8%
• Increased base Physical Damage from 72/94/125 to 90/115/148
• Increased base Electric Damage from 6/11/21 to 21/32/44
• The "A.I. Guided Shrapnels" Skill now increases build cost by 5 and upgradecost by 3 per Level.

Laser Tower

• Increased base Range from 14/16/18 to 16/18/20
• Increased base Heat Piercing from 0/0/0 to 4%/6%/8%
• Increased base Heat Damage from 7/11/16 to 12/17/24
• Decreased min RoF from 0.15 to 0.10

Cryo Tower

• Increased base Range from 15/17/19 to 16/18/20
• Increased base Cold AoE Piercing from 0/0/0 to 2%/4%/6%
• Increased base Cold AoE Damage from 5/9/14 to 12/17/23

Artillery Tower

• Increased base Physical AoE Damage from 9/12/18 to 15/21/28
• Increased base Physical AoE Piercing from 0/0/0 to 1%/3%/5%
• Increased base Heat AoE Damage from 42/56/73 to 48/65/91
• Increased base Heat AoE Piercing from 0/0/0 to 3%/5%/7%

Tesla Tower

• Increased base Electric Piercing from 0/0/0 to 3%/6%/9%
• Increased base Electric Damage from 52/70/90 to 74/90/114
• Increased base Heat Damage from 9/12/15 to 14/20/28

[/expand]

Misc/Bugfixes

• Recipes in crafting screens are now ordered by rarity.
• Added new portrait images for some enemies.
• Added possible bugfix for achievements not being synced with steam.
• Improved Animation performance of enemies that are out of sight of the camera.
• Slightly improved rendering performance of base buildings.
• Slightly improved performance of Miner building Ticks.
• Fixed item rarity color of selected resources in the Miner UI.
• Rearranged interstellar upgrades a bit.
• Added new icons for mining speed upgrades.
• Fixed Skybox not rendering correctly. (Mostly can't be seen anyway because of the camera settings, but also had some other, minor impacts.)
• Fixed some number formatting on the Outpost and Production overview screens.
• Removed the extra hypen for the tower upgrade stats change preview. ( it now is > instead of ->)
• Towers and ghosts now rotate correctly with the Tower Build Slot.
• Fixed some Tutorial Steps.
• Some small Translation fixes.
• The Level SelectScreen now selects your last selected planet & level when you open it.
• Fixed AoE Splash upgrade being unlocked by the wrong skill in the Resource Nexus.

So what's next?

We will have an eye on your feedback to this update and if you encounter bugs or think we should rebalance things. Other than that we'll work as fast as we can on the missing 10 levels and new equipment recipes. Then we'll have to look how well the game does, as of now we are very far away from at least having one of us working fulltime on the game - but that's the indie dev life :D We have ton of ideas and improvements that we would love to still build into this game (like a much better crafting screen for example ^^) but like we've mentioned a few times by now: We do all of this in our spare time besides having fulltime jobs and a family so we have to see what the future brings. If you would like to help us out, tell your friends who might be into this game about it :) It's also currently 35% off for the duration of the Steam Tower Defense Festival! Other than that you can help us by leaving a honest review, join our discussions, give us feedback on what to improve or by just enjoying the game <3 As always hit us up on Discord or in the Steam discussions and let us know what you think or miss! - Snob Entertainment -